Puneites face hardships as 256 buses go off road for 2nd day

Even though the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has agreed to pay the outstanding dues to the Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal (PMPML), the commuters will continue to face difficulty, as the buses of the private contractors will remain off road for a couple of days more.

As many as 256 of the 273 buses hired by the transport body remained off road for the second consecutive day on Wednesday as the PMPML failed to pay the money to the contractors.

PMC standing committee chairman said, “Against the free students bus pass, PMC gives money to PMPML. Considering the crisis caused by the strike of the contractors, the civic body has agreed to pay Rs5-7 crore to the transport body by the end of this week.” Commuters were on the receiving end for two days due to the insufficient number of buses plying on the road.

In order to make up for the situation, 100 extra buses operated on the road on Wednesday which were off road due to maintenance so far. Around 1,150 buses plied on the city roads on Wednesday.
Yogesh Pardeshi, who operates the Prasanna Pakul Mobility Bus with the PMPML, said, “We are supposed to get our payments fortnightly, however, we haven’t received them since April 1.” 

Bennett Buthello, a private operator who has 52 buses running under Buthello Travels, said, “PMPML owes us around Rs1 crore but has paid us only Rs5 lakh. This is insufficient as we have to pay salaries to our drivers and clear pending bills for repairs and diesel.”

Pravin Ashtikar, joint managing director of PMPML, said, “We have appealed to the private operators to resume service from Thursday. As we have promised, we are clearing the bills. Of the eight private operators, we have cleared the bills of two operators till April 15. We will clear the bill at the earliest and we are in touch with the civic bodies in this regard.”

Commuters in the lurch

We do not prefer to use our two-wheelers to ensure that there is less traffic on the road, yet we have to suffer. We had to wait for hours for the buses on Wednesday and reached our offices late,” said Girish Chamchi (36), Laxmi Road resident. “After waiting for the bus for over 45 minutes, I finally managed to get a bus, but it was overcrowded,” Rupesh Tidke (70).

Possible options

The issue may get sorted if the private operators accept PMPML’s offer of payment of bills after getting the dues from the civic bodies.

If private bus operators refuse to call off the strike, PMPML may scrap their contracts and serve notice to them. However, for this, the PMPML will have to make alternate arrangements to procure buses.

PMPML may keep things in abeyance till the weekend and keep on negotiating with the bus operators till it gets money from PMC to settle the dues.